THERE was a time, within the memory of men still active in the cattle
business, when the capacity and demand of the local butcher shop
measured the demand for fat stock and fixed the price as well.
On driving his cattle to the village, or negotiating for their sale,
it was not uncommon for the stockman to be met with the news that a
neighbor had got ahead of him and glutted the market with two or three
or more meat animals. No matter how good the offerings, there was no
present market at any price.
This was the condition of the livestock business in the “good old
days” before the establishing of the great packing centers; before the
development of economical systems of slaughtering, saving the waste,
and distributing dressed beef quickly and continuously to the remotest
parts of the country.
No stockman now considers the demand of the local butcher as a serious
factor in making or breaking the market for his cattle. If he is
feeding a carload or more, he has an approximate date set for the
finishing of his feed. By keeping in close touch with the supply of
cattle in the country, their movement and the trend of prices, he
chooses what appears to be the most favorable day and ships them to the
market.
Even if he is feeding only a few head, the disposal of them is not
dependent upon local demand. He may double-up with his neighbors to
make up a car. He may belong to a shipping association that makes a
business of collecting small lots into carloads for direct shipment,
and although he sells to the local stock buyer, his knowledge of what
his cattle are worth at the central markets enables him to secure a
fair price.
So it has come about that world demand determines prices and governs
buying activities in every town and village where livestock is
purchased. For local butchers everywhere are governed by prices at the
central markets. The truth is that the most successful butchers no
longer do their own killing, but buy their beef from packers’ branch
houses in the larger cities and towns or from “route cars” running from
packing plants or branch houses into the smaller communities.
In doing this they get better beef at lower cost than by local
slaughtering, and they can serve their customers with a safer and more
satisfactory article because the animal is killed and the meat prepared
under the stringent government inspection and sanitary regulations
that are practiced only in the larger establishments. This insures
absolute freedom from diseased conditions and careless handling.
Practical butchers, who are also feeders, have proved by test that they
can ship their beef cattle hundreds of miles to the big packer, have
them slaughtered, dressed and returned at less cost than they can do
their own killing. This is possible because the utilization of every
scrap of the animals in valuable by-products, and the saving in labor
by wholesale slaughtering and handling, pay all expenses, including the
freight both ways, and leave a margin for the butcher besides.
The local butcher or livestock producer can little better afford to
kill and prepare his own beef than he can afford to tan the hide and
make his own shoes. There was a time, even in America, when the farmer
himself actually did these things. He also sheared his own sheep by
hand, while his wife and daughters spun the wool into yarn and wove
cloth for the family clothing. Progress has made such methods absurd,
unprofitable and impracticable.
But the great machinery of economical production and distribution
was not built in a day, or a year, or a decade. Armour and Company’s
activities began more than fifty years ago. At first the packing
house was only a butcher shop on an enlarged scale, preparing and
handling pork products almost exclusively. Cattle were killed for
local consumption only, as there was no such thing as cold storage,
refrigerator car lines or branch houses for the distribution of fresh
meats.
In those days the offal from the packing houses was thrown away or
buried, as is still done to considerable extent by the small butcher
at the present time. The by-products industries, by which hundreds
of valuable articles are now created from what was once waste,
were developed through long years of scientific investigation and
experimentation.
The efficiency of the Armour organization of today is the result of the
accumulated efforts of thousands of trained scientific and business
minds, applied through half a century to the solution of the problem of
factoring and furnishing food supplies for the nation and the world by
the most direct and efficient means.
Nothing less than a great and thoroughly organized concern could effect
the economies that make such achievement possible. Armour and Company’s
growth has been, and is, simply the natural expansion of a great
industry keeping pace with the progress of the producer.